The present invention relates to portable hand held vacuum cleaners, and more particularly, to a portable hand held vacuum cleaner for wet/dry vacuum cleaner applications having an increased efficiency and versatility over prior art designs.
Portable hand held vacuum cleaners have become extremely popular for cleaning a variety of surfaces in homes, offices, cars or wherever there are hard-to-reach places. These portable cordless vacuum cleaner units are relatively light weight and have a handle in order to enable a user to readily utilize them in places where canister, upright or shop type vacuum cleaners cannot be used. As will be appreciated, these portable vacuum cleaners are utilized typically for small clean-up jobs or hard-to-reach places.
Some examples of such cordless, portable vacuum cleaners are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,011,624; 4,209,875; 4,225,814; 4,536,914; and 4,542,557. In addition, reference is also made to the portable, cordless Wet/dry vacuum cleaner shoWn in copending patent application Ser. No. 077,234 filed July 24, 1987 entitled "Portable Wet/Dry Vacuum Cleaner and Recharging Base", and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention.
While such prior art portable hand held vacuum cleaners have worked well for their intended purposes, they have been primarily useful for picking up light weight dry debris, such as dust and small particulate matter. Where heavier and more dense particulate matter is encountered, they have been less effective. In fact, even where dust or other lighter particulate matter are desired to be picked-up or collected, the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the prior cordless vacuum cleaners has been less than desired.
With most of the aforementioned prior art portable vacuum cleaners, they were also not constructed for picking-up or collecting wet debris, such as liquid spills. For example, the filters and motors of some of the prior art portable vacuum cleaners would unnecessarily be exposed and/or not adapted to wet debris.
Typically constructed portable hand held vacuum cleaners include a motor driven blower to forcibly draw air through the vacuum cleaner housing, as well as for exhausting the air from the housing to the atmosphere. As will be understood from the above discussion, prior art portable hand held vacuum cleaners have had limited efficiency, and thus, the ability of such portable hand held units to pick up or collect heavier or more dense debris, or for that matter, even picking up lighter weight debris, has been limited.
Another limiting factor is the efficiency and effectiveness of the air flow path through the portable vacuum cleaner units, while depositing debris in a debris canister or container. Most of the prior art vacuum cleaner units do not have efficient air flow communication within the vacuum cleaner, nor has the debris been selectively deposited in a debris canister or container separate from an air communication channel, while maintaining an efficient air flow path or communication channel throughout the unit.
To separate stray debris from air flowing in the air communication path or channel in the portable vacuum cleaner units, a filter has been placed between the debris container and the blower to separate or prevent debris from entering the blower, which would not only affect the efficiency of the unit, but could damage or impede the operation of the motor and other components, as well. Unfortunately, most filters have limited usefulness, and also have not been used in conjunction with air seals in such a way as to enhance the effectiveness and operation of the portable hand held vacuum units.
In most cases, portable hand held vacuum cleaner units include a rechargeable battery pack incorporated within the vacuum cleaner housing. A battery charger is conventionally provided with such units, for stepping the current down from the 110 volt alternating current at a wall socket to an appropriate voltage with a direct current for operating the unit. The aforementioned prior art designs were not readily capable of accommodating different multiple combinations of batteries therein, in order to provide various price points using the same basic unit design. Further, the portable hand held vacuum cleaners of prior art designs were not easily changed to accommodate different power requirements, where the number of batteries was increased or decreased, for different models at different levels of marketing.